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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

WHO’S TO SAY NO? AND OTHER MYSTERIES OF TODAY’S TOO BIG TO FAIL MENTALITY

The Federal Reserve, announced a week or so ago, is
poised to inject $1.2 trillion (whatever that means) into the economy (whatever
that is).

Well it’s a big number, that’s for sure. And it’s
not as if we actually have it in an account somewhere, to transfer as we might
from some federal savings account to checking, nor are we taxing ourselves in
order to create it. God, or Heaven, or Bernanke forbid. There is no one forbidding and that’s probably
just as well, because the number and the event and its eventual outcome are all
fictions—works of the imagination.

I have some experience with that, as a writer of
fiction. But have rather none at all of
economics, but for standing up to my knees against the current of some eight
decades and trying to cast the fly of my own modest life in a way that might
bring security safely to the net. Security is a wary adversary these days and
not quite the farmed and eager fish of recent years.

But it will not work, this dynamiting the rivers of
opportunity with trillions. We chant the mantra of ‘too big to fail,’ while failure is upon us. The solutions that could
work are long-term and require patience, but we’re out of patience and we’re scared
and it’s getting dark and our boot is leaking. We elected Barack Obama to solve
it, no matter that the engines of our financial demise have been running
full-tilt for decades. Not able to solve it in this 1st quarter of
his presidency, our president’s stock may slip and his (and our) hopes for a
successful IPO may fail as well.

Probably will, which is a very long way from the
hopes of the Rush Limbaughs of America that it actually will fail, allowing conservatives another chance to dynamite the
pond. But we’re in for a long and difficult haul. We’re not yet halfway there.
The AIGs and the Bank of Americas and Goldman Sachs, who claim to have
underpinned our financial security in these frenetic decades are not too big to fail. Fail they will,
fail they must, to rid themselves of fraud and preserve what is worth keeping.

This online pitch comes up #2 if you Google “bank of
america customer base:”

Bank
of America continues to reinvent the real estate partnership model by adding
cutting edge technology and innovation to our suite of business building
opportunities for real estate companies.

The
Bank of America Real Estate Center™ enables millions of our online banking
customers to connect with our Preferred Real Estate BrokersTM. Bank of America
has the largest online customer base of any financial services company
worldwide and is willing to leverage it to help our Preferred Real Estate
Brokers grow their bottom line.

They actually wrote that and promote it online. Does
that sound even remotely like the public interest is at stake? Bank of
America’s boldly stated willingness to
leverage is not even suggested as being in your or my interest, but instead
to help our Preferred Real Estate Brokers
grow their bottom line. I don’t know about you, but I have had my fill of
their preferred brokers bottom-feeding to grow their bottom line. I have
another suggestion for their bottoms and that is to toss them out into the
street and begin prosecution.

Too big to fail is phrasing directly from the swamp
of Wall Street, a non sequitur rivaling

too fat for
a heart attack

too good to
be true

too
essential to be let go and

too old to
die

The public interest is best served we are told, by
hooking an already addicted investment community to a seemingly endless
intravenous drip of public money. Just
because these trillions do not exist does not mean they are not ours to pay
off. The treachery of Wall Street got us used to the idea that the music
would never stop. The continuing treason of Congress whispers in our ear that
they (now) have the wisdom and character to steer beyond their own self
interest.

Time out for a moment as I lightly drop this fly on
the stream of gullibility and float it off in your direction: Does it make
sense to you that a Senator will spend $6-8 million (expanding toward $25-30
million) to get himself/herself elected to a position that pays a $169,300 annual
salary? None but the most credulous would swallow that. Bribes to Harry Reid in
the past five years totaled over $12 million. Chuck Schumer, that paradigm of
financial blowhardiness, sucked up more than $13 mil during the same period.

So, who’s to say no? Certainly not those with a line
in the water. Apparently not the paid-off legislators, Mark Twain’ famous ‘only native American criminal class.’
Twain and a pair of Roosevelt presidents fished in these same murky and
senselessly unregulated waters.

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